Please Yell at My Kids: What Cultures Around the World Can Teach You About Parenting in Community, Raising Independent Kids, and Not Losing Your Mind

“Raising children should not be a private project, but a shared one,” according to this edifying debut. Brazilian American journalist Lopes recounts how the assistance that even distant family members provided her after the birth of her eldest child in Brazil was a salve, contrasting it with how an individualistic culture, unaffordable child care, and lack of paid family leave left her American friends with kids “shells” of themselves. Contending that Americans would do well to learn from how other countries approach parenthood, she suggests that severe economic inequality in the U.S. produces the anxiety about downward mobility that drives helicopter parenting, pointing to the Netherlands’ greater economic equality and affordable education system as central reasons why Dutch parents take a more relaxed approach. Elsewhere, she discusses how the Iban tribe’s communal dwellings in Malaysia—which house up to 40 families—mirrored her own decision to raise her kids in the same household as her two married friends and their children. The eye-opening examination of foreign child-rearing practices demonstrates how policy failings and damaging cultural expectations have made raising a kid in the U.S. unnecessarily difficult. This sharp study makes a persuasive case against American-style parenting while charting a better path forward. Agent: Jenna Land Free, Folio Literary. (Apr.)